Würzburg Economic Papers (W. E. P.)
ISSN 2941-7651
Band 1-103 online verfügbar unter https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/zbwwuewep/
Band 1-103 online verfügbar unter https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/zbwwuewep/
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111
A lot of countries have recently published updated hydrogen strategies, often including more ambitious targets for hydrogen production. In parallel, accompanying ramp-up mechanisms are increasingly coming into focus with the first ones already being released. However, these proposals usually translate mechanisms from renewable energy (RE) policy without considering the specific uncertainties, spillovers, and externalities of integrating hydrogen electrolysis into electricity grids. This article details how different aspects of a policy can address the specific issues, namely funding, risk-mitigation, and the complex relation with electricity markets. It shows that, compared to RE policy, subsidies need to emphasize the input side more strongly as price risks and intermittency from electricity markets are more prominent than from hydrogen markets. Also, it proposes a targeted mechanism to capture the positive externality of mitigating excess electricity in the grid while keeping investment security high. Economic policy should consider such approaches before massively scaling support and avoid the design shortcomings experienced with early RE policy.
110
Expanding on a general equilibrium model of offshoring, we analyze the effects of a unilateral emissions tax increase on the environment, income, and inequality. Heterogeneous firms allocate labor across production tasks and emissions abatement, while only the most productive can benefit from lower labor and/or emissions costs abroad and offshore. We find a non-monotonic effect on global emissions, which decline if the initial difference in emissions taxes is small. For a sufficiently large difference, global emissions rise, implying emissions leakage of more than 100%. The underlying driver is a global technique effect: While the emissions intensity of incumbent non-offshoring firms declines, the cleanest firms start offshoring. Moreover, offshoring firms become dirtier, induced by a reduction in the foreign effective emissions tax in general equilibrium. Implementing a BCA prevents emissions leakage, reduces income inequality in the reforming country, but raises inequality across countries.
109
This paper examines the potential reinforcement of motivated beliefs when individuals with identical biases communicate. We propose a controlled online experiment that allows to manipulate belief biases and the communication environment. We find that communication, even among like-minded individuals, diminishes motivated beliefs if it takes place in an environment without previously declared external opinions. In the presence of external plural opinions, however, communication does not reduce but rather aggravates motivated beliefs. Our results indicate a potential drawback of the plurality of opinions - it may create communication environments wherein motivated beliefs not only persist but also become contagious within social networks.
108
International trade is highly imbalanced both in terms of values and in terms of embodied carbon emissions. We show that the persistent current value trade imbalance patterns contribute to a higher level of global emissions compared to a world of balanced international trade. Specifically, we build a Ricardian quantitative trade model including sectoral input-output linkages, trade imbalances, fossil fuel extraction, and carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and use this framework to simulate counterfactual changes to countries' trade balances. For individual countries, the emission effects of removing their trade imbalances depend on the carbon intensities of their production and consumption patterns, as well as on their fossil resource abundance. Eliminating the Russian trade surplus and the US trade deficit would lead to the largest environmental benefits in terms of lower global emissions. Globally, the simultaneous removal of all trade imbalances would lower world carbon emissions by 0.9 percent or 295 million tons of carbon dioxide.
107
This study describes the Chinese growth model over the past 40 years. We show that China's growth model, with its dominant role of the banking system and "the banker", is a perfect illustration of the necessity and power of Schumpeter's "monetary analysis". This approach has allowed us to elaborate theoretically and empirically the uniqueness of the Chinese model. In our empirical analysis, we use a new dataset of Chinese provincial data to analyze the impact of the financial system, especially banks, on Chinese economic development. We also empirically assess the role of the financial system in Chinese industrial policy and provide case studies of the effects of industrial policy in specific sectors. Finally, we also discuss macroeconomic dimensions of the Chinese growth process and lessons that can be drawn from the Chinese experience for other countries.
106
The necessary adjustments to prominent measures of the neutral rate of interest following the COVID pandemic sparked a wide-ranging debate on the measurement and usefulness of r-star. Due to high uncertainty about relevant determinants, trend patterns and the correct estimation method, we propose in this paper a simple alternative approach derived from a standard macro model. Starting from a loss function, neutral periods can be determined in which a neutral real interest rate is observable. Using these values, a medium-term trend for a neutral interest rate can be determined. An application to the USA shows that our simple calculation of a neutral interest rate delivers comparable results to existing studies. A Taylor rule based on our neutral interest rate also does a fairly good job of explaining US monetary policy over the past 60 years.
105
Government support for green technologies and renewable energy in particular has become an integral cornerstone of economic policy for most industrialized economies. Due to competitive price determination and supposedly higher efficiency, auctions have in recent years widely succeeded feed-in-tariffs as the primary support instrument (del Rio & Linares, 2014; REN21, 2021). However, literature still struggles to produce causal evidence to validate mostly descriptive findings for efficiency gains. Yet, this evidence is needed as a foundation to provide robust recommendations to policy makers (Grashof et al., 2020). By utilizing a difference-in-differences approach, this paper provides such evidence for a German photovoltaic (PV) auctioning program which came into effect in 2015. Results for this natural experiment confirm that cost-effectiveness improved significantly while previous literature shows that capacity expansion remained high. Results additionally show that falling prices for PV panels were the primary driver of cost reductions and wages also exert high influence on support price. Input cost development therefore indeed strongly influences support level which was the aim with introducing competitive auctions. Interest rate development cannot be linked to support level development, most probably due to the low interest environment in considered period.
104
We propose that false beliefs about own current economic status are an important factor for explaining populist attitudes. Eliciting subjects’ receptiveness to rightwing populism and their perceived relative income positions in a representative survey of German households, we find that people with pessimistic beliefs about their income position are more attuned to populist statements. Key to understanding the misperception-populism relationship are strong gender differences in the mechanism: men are much more likely to channel their discontent into affection for populist ideas. A simple information provision does neither sustainably reduce misperception nor curb populism.